One of the recent Floss Weekly episodes features an interview with Nichole Yankelovich of Open Wonderland. Open Wonderland is an open source, Java-based toolkit for creating virtual or immersive environments, and one of the specific audiences they target is education.
Because it’s a toolkit, instructors or schools can customize it to meet their specific learning needs. Another advantage appeals to those concerned with privacy. Because it runs behind a firewall, teachers don’t really have to worry about cyber-bullying or other sorts of pernicious behavior that students may have to contend with in more open virtual world environments such as Second Life. Shu Schiller has an interesting article on this article when using Second Life within the context of an MBA-Information Systems class. However, that said, schools or educators can work around this issue by getting a Second Life premium account for about $10 and so in the end, I guess it kind of boils down to one of those common software trade-offs: do the development work in-house and reap the benefits of greater customization, etc. or go with what amounts to a hosted option with less flexibility.